Outline Bezier curve in 2D mode
As shown you can use the Offset section in the Font / Curve Objects tab, of the Properties panel. This produces a reasonable offset perimeter for  2D Curve and Font objects. There are limitations with respect to self intersection.

I'm writing this response in Sept 2015, some of these details might change but they describe the current state of this feature.


A non-zero offset will expand or shrink the surface area of the Object.

here positive offset expands it: 


You can't see the original shape as an outline when the offset is non-zero. I can imagine it would be useful sometimes to see the original via some ghosting outline, (You could duplicate the object and leave the duplicate with no offset to see the original form, but that's extra work..)
you can't see the 'projected' Curve handles. (Without looking at the code i'm not even sure they are projected ..the outline could be generated post tessellation of the surface, and you might only get a polyline.. i don't know.)
When you convert a font-object with offset to a Curve object, you get a 2D curve with the Curve handles of the original Glyphs. This means you don't get the Curve handles that are the result of the offset, same issue as above. Usually this isn't a problem, but I can imagine use-cases where the offset Curve handles would be preferred.




In a subsequent question you ask how one might get those handles. Currently i'm not aware that there is a way to get them easily without   


changing Blender's source-code
writing a Python script that re-implements the C source for the 2D Curve offset as python operator, or implements an alternative outline algorithm to retain the Curve handles.




Making an outline anyway

Is possible, but any method that I can think of seems to have some inelegance.




For the above image I used 2 font objects, one with zero offset, and one a positive offset. 
The Font object with offset is converted to mesh, then converted to Curve, and you get a single closed polyline. You set the Curve mode back to 2D and if you have the surface filled 2D Curve again, (but now it lacks Bezier handles).
Then you convert the original Font Object to a Curve (which will have Bezier handles) and join it with the new closed poly-line version to get something like this: